Speaking of Tampons.

Kevin sees his neighbor, an attractive female in her mid-20s, exit their apartment building's laundry room. The Wichita, Kansas, lawyer waits a few moments and sneaks into the laundry facility, delighted to find that, just as she has done many times before, the next-door hottie has placed one load of dirty clothes into the washer and left another one by the machine.

The laundry-room burglar rummages through the unattended basket and sees what he was hoping to find: a pair of panties stained with menstrual fluid. Kevin quickly snags the underwear and scurries to his apartment.

The blood in the underwear's crotch is almost completely dry, but the menstruation enthusiast has developed a technique: Kevin sprinkles water on the panties and pops them into the microwave for ten seconds, which remoistens the catamenial fluid and brings the underpants up to body temperature.

The panty thief raises the warm, wet cotton scanties to his nostrils and sniffs the musky aroma as he urgently tugs his cock, fantasizing about his neighbor's blood-dripping vagina.

***

Beating off with menses-stained undergarments is just one of many period-sex permutations. This rather broad category of erotic activities includes everything from fucking a gal while she's on the rag to sucking on a blood-soaked tampon (known as a 'Dracula's tea bag').

Although he's a licensed attorney, vaginal vampire Kevin now makes a living maintaining menstrual-fetish Web sites. Because of this newfound profession, he no longer has to tiptoe into laundry rooms to attain his menstrual fix. 'I've met so many girls that are into [period sex] themselves that it's not like I have to steal panties anymore. Usually they're given to me as a love offering.'

For safety reasons, the 49-year-old Webmaster limits his menstrual play to smelling bloody articles, unless he knows the chick with the hemorrhaging gash, in which case he will take his period passions to more extreme levels. 'When I [worked at] an office building instead of out of my home, [there was] a private bathroom that just the girls in my office used,' Kevin recalls. 'I would hit that very regularly because I had a couple of sexy secretaries. I'd find pads, tampons and panty liners. I knew those girls pretty well; so I'd stick the whole thing in my mouth while I was masturbating.'

A spokeswoman for Proctor & Gamble, the maker of Tampax, advises against the oral insertion of its flagship feminine product. 'I'm not aware of any safety concerns, but we have not tested [the tampon] for that, and we wouldn't recommend it for use in that way, because that's not its intended purpose,' says the employee.

A more realistic health concern is contracting an STD. 'Menstrual blood is blood, and HIV can be spread through blood,' explains an operator for the Center for Disease Control's National HIV, AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Hotline, who encourages anyone who fucks or sucks a woman during menstruation to use the appropriate protection, such as condoms and dental dams. According to the CDC operator, there is some good news for guys who jerk off with the aid of bloody tampons, underwear and sanitary napkins: Once the menstrual fluid completely dries, the HIV virus dies, and adding water to the excreted womb lining won't bring the virus back to life.

The disease-hotline operator would most likely be horrified to learn of the menstrual activities that period freak Jake engages in. 'My wife will take a used tampon directly out of her and put it directly into me,' says Jake, who has been a menstrual freak ever since he found a box of his mom's tampons and stuck one up his rectum. Aside from the occasional Kotex butt plug, Jake also enjoys playing with tampons while they're inside a menstruating woman's vagina, sucking on bloody feminine products and eating out ladies who are riding the crimson wave.

A 46-year-old North Carolina resident who writes menstrual erotica under the pen name PlanetDweller also engages in a wide variety of rag-time follies. 'I've always enjoyed fucking a partner while she's wearing a tampon, then fishing it out and body-painting her with it. I also enjoy penile/vaginal sex, followed by making her lick me clean until I come in her mouth.'

Jake and PlanetDweller both blame (or credit) their mothers for their unusual sexual appetites. '[My mother] was very open about menstruation and her own periods from the time I was a toddler,' says PlanetDweller. 'In fact, she would leave her used, soiled, rolled-up old Kotex all over the house in the strangest places: the living room, the kitchen and my room.'

Similarly, Jake's mom often inserted and removed her tampons in front of him while he took a bath. 'She would just come in and make a little production out of things. There was no question that she knew that she had me very excited.'

PlanetDweller thinks that a preference for period sex may also have to do with evolutionary biology. 'Without periods, there would be no fertility, and without fertility, there would be no continuation of the human species; so I think a lot of times this so-called fetish is driven more by a deeply subconscious and primal assessment of potential fertility in a mate than something overtly and consciously sexual.'

Pad freak C. P. agrees. 'During 'that time,' some women give off pheromones that attract some men. The first girl that I really laid a move on was on her period. For some reason, it turned me on.' C. P. became so in tune with the come-hither scents of menstruating females that several of his first dates were not-so-coincidentally experiencing the curse.

Whatever the fetish's origins, there are enough flow lovers in the world to support a cottage industry. Risqué Renee sells and stars in a series of menstrual videos, many of which, including Bloody Mess and First Blood, are considered classics of the 'red tape' genre.

The blond auteur, who one reviewer calls the Madam of Menses, creates made-to-order porn flicks for which the buyer can dictate the sex acts that Renee performs on camera. A European fan recently ordered a custom tape for her male master, who happens to be a huge admirer of Renee's work. She asked Renee to film herself shoving a banana in and out of her pussy, anointing the fruit with her sanguine fluid. The client wants Renee to then peel the banana and reinsert the fruit into her bleeding twat.

The menstrual queen also offers her blood-saturated panties and feminine-hygiene products for sale. 'I usually have all of my pads [and] tampons spoken for at least two months in advance. I had a particular customer who wanted the pads on a monthly basis. His wife had gone through menopause, and he missed the whole period thing at home.'

Prostitutes and dominatrices also help flow freaks live out their menstrual fantasies. One dominatrix, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls how one of her clients, a famous sit-com star who has a period fetish, would pay her and a friend to fulfill his kinky requests. 'We'd throw bloody tampons at him and make him suck them,' says the brunet dominatrix. 'I had another client, an uptight Capitol Hill lawyer, who had me save my used tampons, give him a golden shower and force my bloody tampons down his throat.'

While some period players engage in a wide variety of bloody fun, many flow fanatics are extremely finicky. 'There is a fine distinction between the pad and tampon people,' says Renee.

Surprisingly, not all menstruation enthusiasts are men. 'I always lick and suck my lover's dick clean of blood,' says Justine, a blond Englishwoman who is featured heavily on Bigtunaman.com, a Web site devoted to menstruation pictures. 'The taste of blood, pussy juices and semen makes an exquisite cocktail.'

Justine boasts that she has sucked the blood out of her own tampon, as well as used a dildo on her bleeding cunt before licking it clean. Another time, a girlfriend pulled out Justine's tampon and squeezed the blood all over her own tits, which Justine happily lapped up.

Justine calls menstrual sex a 'panacea' that relieves cramps and premenstrual syndrome. 'Women are often turned on during their periods, and ignoring this can cause frustration and rejection,' says the Web starlet. 'No wonder women often get grumpy and have mood swings at this time of the month.'

PlanetDweller recommends that men and women intimately share this time of the month. 'Period sex often creates a special bond between partners,' maintains the writer. 'If a woman trusts you with her most intimate of times and secrets, then she trusts you explicitly and, pardon the pun, Always.'